Is Peer Review a Fail?

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Paul Waldman: The peer review system is not equipped to solve all the problems. He says reviewers do not redo statistics or fact check, so a lot of garbage gets through. Waldman: When it's done well, it actually keeps a lot of awful stuff from getting out and also improves papers. "There's something deeply meritocratic about peer review," he says.

Do psychologists know anything? Psychologist Paul Bloom says yes--but not the things that you might think. Bloom discusses his book Psych with EconTalk's Russ Roberts and what the field of psychology can teach us about human intelligence, consciousness, and unhelpful instincts. They also discuss just how far psychology is from a true understanding of the human mind, and why, according to Bloom, that might not be such a bad thing.